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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to model and characterize the ultimate bending strength of laminated braided fabric reinforced composites.An experimental procedure has been carried out to measure the load–deflection relationships of laminated beams made from multilayers of diamond braided carbon fabrics and an epoxy matrix subjected to 4-point bending.Two braiding angles, i.e. 5° and 15°, with different fabric arrangements have been utilized.The failure mechanisms of the fabric laminae within the laminate were realized with the help of a resin combustion and fabric peeling technique.It was found that the failure of the beams always initialed from the top surface and that some layers including the bottom surface did not fail when the maximum lateral load was applied.This shows that the ultimate bending strength of a laminate generally does not correspond to the stress level at which the last-ply failure takes place.Thus, in addition to the maximum normal stress failure criterion incorporated with the present modeling approach, a critical deflection or curvature condition is also necessary in order that the ultimate bending failure can be identified.The overall load shared by a lamina in the laminate is two-dimensional (2D), and is determined by virtue of the classical lamination theory.However, the lamina local response within its ply system is three-dimensional (3D) due to a complicated fibrous preform contained, and is analyzed based on the bridging model.Only the individual fiber and matrix properties and the laminate geometric parameters are required, which can be easily determined/measured beforehand.Using measured beam deflection corresponding to which the ultimate bending load occurred as the additional controlling parameter, the predicted load–deflection curves up to the third-ply failure for a number of the braided carbon–epoxy laminates agree reasonably well with the experimental results.

Keywords

laminated composites braided composites progressive failure load–deflection curve ultimate bending strength stress failure criterion critical deflection condition modeling bridging model experiments

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Modeling and Characterization of Bending Strength of Braided Fabric Reinforced Laminates

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